In the Darkest Hours
by socks-lost
Summary: One shot. Rated for subject matter. Second POV. Jane is just so, so tired.


**A/N: **The product of wanting to write something angsty and being in a bad mood. As the description says this is dark and angsty and more on level with hurt/hurt. It's not happy at all or sappy or anything like that (I needed a detox from all the fluff of It's Complicated.) Also kind of wanted to explore a world where things aren't just laughed off. And yeah. Trigger warning for thoughts of suicide.

**Disclaimer: **Don't own the characters not making money etc.

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You sit in your apartment and wonder. Wondering – thinking – it's a dangerous game. Even more so with the gun in your hand. It feels heavy. You remember the first time you held a gun you were shocked by the heaviness of it, how cold it was. You were shocked by the power that came surging through your veins from holding the object in your hand. Shocked and amazed. But now, now that gun is anything but power and awe and amazement. Now that gun is full of memories. It's poison in your hand and you want to drink it. You've never had that thought before. Even when things were at their worst you never thought about eating your own gun. It was a coward's way out, against your religion, and so many other options out there to not do it. You don't even know why you want to today. You don't like to be inside your head too much lately anyway. You don't like what you think about when you venture in there. You can't even drink the feeling away. You tried. You tried last weekend. You spent all of Saturday and Sunday in a liquor induced haze. But still that feeling was there ever present in the back of your head.

You take inventory of your apartment. You take in the baseball collection on your desk, the hockey sticks by the door. You look at the empty dog bed because you were late and your mother took Jo so she wouldn't be alone. In your fridge you only have a six pack and suspicious milk. You don't have time for anything else, you don't even have time for the milk. You let your eyes roam over everything in your living room as you calculate how much blood would get on everything, where it would go. You've seen this crime scene at least half a dozen times. You always thought you were on the other side of the line. The end where you talk the guy down from jumping, from pulling the trigger, from ending it. You always had a response to fire back at them to not do it. But somehow you crossed that line and now if someone were to ask why they shouldn't you would hesitate. That scares you. The gun in your hand scares you. Being alone scares you. Everything scares you. What do you do when fear is keeping you from living? What do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat unable to breathe? You don't know when it happened, but you are constantly gripped by this paralyzing fear all the time. You jump at everything now. Your hands shake and you just can't do it anymore.

The gun in your hand is not your service piece. You are not wearing your uniform or your badge, not even one of your work suits. The gun is from your personal collection and you're wearing a pair of roughed up jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt. You're not trying to make some statement. You want everyone to know that it wasn't the job – it was never the job. It was just you, you and your screwed up head.

You're a homicide detective. Jane Rizzoli, Boston Homicide. You've introduced yourself that way so many times you catch yourself doing it off the job. When you first got your badge right out of the academy you felt like a man who had just been knighted. You were all nice and bright and green, ready to go out into the world and make differences. But the job, the life, it roughened up your smooth edges. You are not nice and green and bright. You are not happy. And the differences you make fall on both sides of the line of good and bad.

You feel like a failure. The feeling rips at your soul, literally tearing you to pieces on the inside. Little voices in your head become not so little. Your chest tightens. You can't breathe. You've been through this before. It's a never ending cycle of perpetual sadness. And you are so, so tired.

You're a failure of a homicide detective. Isn't it funny how your brain does that? Where it takes two separate thoughts and joins them as one in holy matrimony and you can't think of them as two separate things anymore. Because you're catholic and divorce is frowned upon. But your parents got divorced and your dad practically disowned you. And somehow that feels like your fault too.

There's a picture on your desk that catches your eye. It's of you and Frankie at his graduation from the police academy. You're brushing your hands over his new badge and looking him in the eye. You can't see your face, your back is to the camera, but you see Frankie's. He looks nice and bright and green. And you wonder if he ever feels like this. You wonder if in the darkest hours of the night if he ever takes his gun out and holds it. You wonder if he's felt the cool steel of the barrel on his temple. You wonder if he's ever felt like he was suffocating by all the things that don't get said, all the things they carried underneath that badge. You wonder if it catches up with him and hits him. Is it gradual? Or is it like getting t-boned by an eighteen wheeler? You hope he hasn't. But you don't hope. You don't pray. You don't do anything optimistic. Your life broke you of optimism. Of good and happy.

There's another picture next to that one. It's of you and Maura and other people but you're the only two that you can see. Maura is holding a trophy from the police department softball league with the most stunned look on her face. Your smile says everything. You love her. You're proud of her. You and Korsak are about to lift her in the air and put her on both of your shoulders. She hit a home run which allowed the two men on bases two and three to take it home. Her hit put homicide up in the final minutes of the championship game. There is dirt on her cheek and the red BH hat is crooked on her head. She's wearing this ridiculous expression. Like she can't believe any of this is happening. Queen of the Dead became Maura on that softball diamond. She drank beer with all the guys, played darts and pool too. She took free shots of tequila and bought rounds for the whole damn place that night at The Robber.

Your eyes continue to travel around the room. The second you leave the safety of that picture frame you feel it all over again. The overwhelming exhaustion hits you like it always does. You are so tired. You're too tired to put the gun to your head, too tired to pull the trigger, too tired to put it down, too tired to sleep. Your bones creak like an old house on a hill and like that house you too are haunted by the horrors you've seen.

This is your purgatory, your hellish punishment for all the wrong you've done, for all the bad things you couldn't stop. And you take it sitting on your couch holding your gun in your hand unable to move.

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**A/N: **The standard if you're feeling depressed or upset you should talk to someone. My PM thing is always open.

US number for the suicide hotline is: 1-800-273-8255

At the website befrienders with the period and org at the end you should find a hotline for your country if you're not in the US. (That was hard trying to word that so it'd be there.)


End file.
